anglicized to "Friedlaender" in the United States,
"Friedrich Walter," pseudonym

Date born: 1873

Place born: Glogau, Germany (modern Poland)

Date died: 1966

Place died: New York, NY

New York University baroque scholar, 1935-42. Friedländer
was the son of Sigismund Friedländer, a merchant, and Anna Joachimsthal
(Friedländer). Orphaned early in life, Friedländer
was raised a Lutheran, though his deceased parents had both been Jewish. He moved at age 13
to live with a
sister in Berlin, where he obtained the nickname "Fridolin." Friedländer
attended the University in Berlin studying Sanscrit under Albrecht Weber (1825-1901). He also
spent a semester in Geneva studying linguistics under Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).
His Ph.D. on the topic of the Sanskrit language was granted in Berlin in 1898. In 1900 he traveled to London
on a post-doctorate fellowship at the British Museum. The
treasures of the National Gallery convinced him to become an art historian. He
returned to Berlin taking courses in art history under Heinrich Wölfflin, although Berlin
would not allow a second Ph.D. Friedländer wrote newspapers magazine
reviews under the pseudonym "Dr. Friedrich Walter," from 1904 onward.
He traveled to Italy, and, in 1912 wrote his book on Federico Barocci which
established
him as an art historian. His next monograph, on Nicolas Poussin, in 1914
was the result of study in Paris. Unfortunately, a book on the same subject,
published by Otto Grautoff appeared the same year, largely overshadowing
his accomplishment. In 1914, too, he married Emma Cardin and became
a Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg am Breisgau. The
Freiburg art history department was led by the eminent medievalist Wilhelm Vöge, who had initiated the art history seminar in 1908. Friedländer's inaugural lecture re-evaluated the Mannerist
period of Italian painting in a talk entitled
"Anti-classical Style of 1520." Friedländer was a visionary here,
especially considering that Wölfflin's Grundbegriffe, which would appear
the following year, still considered the last sixteenth century an ignorable
period. Friedländer taught a range of courses from medieval to
nineteenth-century. Among his first students was the
brilliant Erwin Panofsky who eventually wrote his dissertation under Vöge
in 1914. Vöge suffered a mental collapse in 1916, leaving Friedländer to carry
much of the teaching load. In 1925 Friedländer published his lecture on early (Mannerist)
"Anti-classicism," a second in 1929 on later and post-Mannerism, and an primer on the early
modernist movement, Von David bis Delacroix in 1932. For this, he was promoted
to Nichtbeamtete Professor extraordinarius, but not full professor.
Panofsky, now at the University in Hamburg and the Warburg Library, oversaw
publication of a festschrift to Friedländer in 1933, despite Friedländer's
largely formalist
methodological approach. Before Friedländer could retire
and the festschrift printed, the Nazis dismissed Panofsky and Friedländer on
"racial/Jewish" grounds. Friedländer traveled the next two years in Germany
before Panofsky secured a temporary position for him at he University of
Pennsylvania and at New York University's new Institute of Fine Arts. He
and another German refugee, Karl Lehmann, were given permanent
appointments at NYU. In 1939, his catalog on Poussin drawings began appearing
(through 1974). His articles on mannerism and anti-mannerism were translated
by his students, (Mahonri S. Young and others), and circulated widely in
mimeographed copies. Friedländer retired in 1942 to emeritus status. He divorced in 1943; he continued to be productive, advising students
and writing until his death. His students translated
Von David bis Delacroix in 1952 as From David to Delacroix.
In 1955, Friedländer's last book, Caravaggio Studies, appeared. It
had started as a larger work on the artist during Friedländer's Freiburg years.
His articles on the anti-classical and post-Mannerism, again, translated by his
students, appeared in 1957. His papers were donated to the Leo Baeck Institute
for the Study of the History of Culture of German-speaking Jewry. Friedländer's students
included the modernists Robert Goldwater, Milton Brown, and Robert Rosenblum; in his own subject area, students included John P. Coolidge, Frederick Hartt, Jane Costello,
Creighton Gilbert, Frances Huemer, Walter Cahn and Donald Posner.

Friedländer's reputation as an art historian is uneven. Methodologically he
employed a largely formalist approach to his history which remained unaffected by
other emerging methods, though he
was capable of criticizing Wölfflin's work such
as Classic Art. Friedländer was among those art historians
who rejected the notion of Italian Mannerism as a degenerate style, even
eschewing the term "Mannerism" itself. He formulated the boundaries of
Mannerism ("anti-classicism") as beginning around 1520 and generating a second wave around
1550. Posthumously published volumes of his
catalog of Poussin drawings were significantly changed by its editors, Rudolf Wittkower, who disagreed with Friedländer's decisions on autograph works, and Anthony Blunt, who was working on a Poussin book of his own. His volume on Caravaggio
revised the artist's reputation to underscore Caravaggio's religious seriousness. He refused to credit formally the work of his New York University
students in his books (Caravaggio Studies for example), except for
dedication to them. LS